Finally I was quite happy to leave Sucre. There was nothing to do there, and after the lack of sleep and the rain I needed a bit of blue sky. So I went to Potosí, where is the former largest silver mine in the world, worked since the Spaniards, and highest city in the world (4160m). Instead of sky I got the ceiling of mining tunnels, and instead of blue the black of dust and misery...

But before that things were a bit happier. :) At the bus station in Sucre I had met Susan and Mark, my Dutch friends from the jungle tour, and they were also going to Potosí, a but later than me. So we met again in Sucre, they were staying in the hostel just in front of mine, where were also two of the three French girls from the same tour! The world is tiny... :)

The day before my tour of the mines, they showed a movie in my hostel, The Devil's Miner, the story of a kid working in the mines of Potosí. It's a beautiful documentary, but let's say that when the final credits started rolling on, no one was saying anything, and you could hear a few people heavily breathing to calm down the moisture in their eyes... I won't say more, try to see the film, it's well worth it, and get out the tissues.

The day after that tough introduction I went for my tour of one of the mines (there are more than 300 in the Cerro Rico). First we changed for some more adapted chothing, and then we went to the miner's market, where I met again Susan and Mark! :) Stopping at the market is a tradition: we don't pay the entrance to the mine, but as some thing cost a lot of money (for Bolivian standards, not ours), we buy them for miners. After the previous day's movie I left with quite more money than I had planned initially, and I ended up with 7 stick of dynamite in my backpack, wicks, phosphate (for stronger explosions), etc. :)

And after that, the hole. An old dark mine, only lit by our little frontal lamps. Mud on the floor an arsenic on the walls. Dust. Without ventilation, foul air. Going forward squatting, crouching or crawling. Guys working at the bottom of this hell, asking us when they pass by if we have anything to drink. A dive into a nightmare, that becomes ours for two hours. Being on the edge while watching the few balks, slowly giving way under the weight of the mountain caving in. And then the explainations of the guide, ex-miner (who had narrowly escaped a brutal cave-in a week before) and the conversations in front of Tio with miners dazed with fatigue and coca leaves...

This mountain's been worked in since the Spaniards, who used enslaved indigenous to dig into pure silver seams. Then the main seams were exhausted, and the successive governments took over until there was no pure silver left. Operations stopped for a while, until technology allowed separating the silver from the copper and tin that make up the small veins nowadays. Mining cooperatives were then set up to try to scrap a pittance from the bowels of the mountain, and tht's the way it works today.

Working conditions are terrible. An that doesn't even convey what it really is. Fuck, we've done revolutions in Europe for less than that! A life of misery and famine, incredibly hard, without any security. It's estimated that since the opening of the mines 8 millions of people have died there, and it's still going on today. And what for? Wage a bit above the Bolivian monthly minimum (B/. 300, ~ 40US$), no qualification required, and a life expectancy of 35 years... When accidents don't kill, silicosis does, the miner's disease that wears down the lungs and kills within 10 years of mine. To forget, 96° alcohol (no kidding!), a poison that knocks out faster than anything else, and coca leaves all day long to ease the hunger and the fear...

I can't realy transmit in writing the terrible emotions that I felt during this half-day. Sadness, frustration, rage, inability to change things. And above all the urge to raise the fist, to rebel, to help create a beter world for those that we have forgotten...

Arise, wretched of the earthArise, convicts of hungerReason thunders in its volcanoThis is the eruption of the endOf the past let us wipe the slate cleanMasses, slaves, arise, ariseThe world is about to change its foundationWe are nothing, let us be all